Communicating and trying to help my dad during his cancer diagnosis just reinforced the need for Navigating Cancer for me. If I had our platform, I could have helped my dad in ways I wasn’t able to. Luckily, his doctor now uses the platform.

Growing up, it was a fact that my mom was chronically ill and wouldn’t get better. But what frustrated me was that the system made it so hard to figure how to get the care she needed so she wouldn’t get worse. Because my parents spoke only elementary English, it was up to me to make sense of our insurance, paperwork, and medications across her primary care physician, pulmonologist, rheumatologist, neurologist, etc. Instead of spending what was left of the precious time with my mom, I instead spent too much of that time on the phone trying to coordinate her care.
My mom passed away a few years ago, and I’ve always felt that the system failed her. I joined Navigating Cancer because I truly believe we’re creating a patient-centered solution that will help not just cancer patients, but all patients and their loved ones. This is my opportunity to take what my family experienced and actually do something about it.

Before starting Navigating Cancer, I was helping my father sort through mountains of irrelevant information as he was coming to terms with his diagnosis of late-stage metastatic melanoma. Since he lives in a smaller town 350 miles away from me, it was difficult for me to stay connected and to help him organize all the information, connect with specialists and locate potential clinical trials. If Navigating Cancer had existed I could have been much more involved and helpful as he battled cancer. This experience with cancer, from my perspective as well as my dad’s, opened my eyes to the huge opportunity we have to make things better.